Project brief
The goal was to create a speculative smart device and a companion app. Our team’s assigned topic was healthcare.
Team: Mohit Gupta (me), Carson Young, David Luong and Zachery Eng.
Research
Understanding the audience
We narrowed the topic by focusing on a specific audience and health problem.
The problem
In Canada, roughly 600,000 children under 12 are affected by asthma, and even with multiple solutions, only about 50% of them know how to use their inhalers properly.
As a result, parents buy additional equipment, like an air chamber (spacer), to help their children take their medication. These help, but they bring their own challenges:
Spacers are big and bulky
They add an extra part that needs assembly, making them very inconvenient.
Stigma of carrying an inhaler
Children are often bullied for carrying an inhaler and may feel embarrassed using one.
No indication of dosage left
Inhalers aren’t intuitive, so it’s hard to know when the medication runs out.
Hard to measure breathing efficiency
Parents have no way of knowing if their children are inhaling all of the medication properly.
Design challenge
How might we…
How might we design a product for childhood asthma that’s easy to use, builds children’s confidence to take their medication regularly, and helps parents manage their kid’s asthma every day?
Design solution
Oble is an easy-to-use, friendly smart inhaler for children that combines a standard pressurized metered-dose inhaler (pMDI) and a spacer into a single product.
With its companion app, Oble helps children take their medication more effectively with no assembly. Built-in Bluetooth lets parents track usage and see how well their child is doing every day.
My responsibilities
We all worked together on research, ideation and visual design. I was mainly responsible for the visual design and UI/UX of the app, and we synced twice a week to give each other feedback as the product developed.
Research
Stakeholder interviews, user personas and PACT analysis, to list constraints and opportunities.
Ideation
Brainstorming, product sketches, and listing and prioritizing features for both the app and the physical product.
Visual design
Helped establish the visual design guideline (typography, colours, product values) for the brand and app UI. (Illustrations weren’t designed by me.)
Physical product
We all sketched concepts. Zachery refined the details, Carson built the 3D models, and I rendered them in Cinema 4D for the product shots.
App design
I built early wireframes, user scenarios and visual mockups, iterated from weekly feedback and designed the final screens. Carson prototyped them in Principle.
Motion design
We wrote the script and recorded narration together; David found the narrator and ran recording. Zac did illustration and animation; I helped animate the type at the end.
Research
Initial research
We interviewed parents, pharmacists, doctors and others affected by asthma to understand the daily challenges families face, which helped us create personas for our potential users.
These conversations gave us valuable insight into the daily struggles of having asthma and caring for someone who does. Our main findings:
After consolidating our interviews, secondary research and competitor analysis, we created a PACT analysis and user personas to show the real problems, which helped us pinpoint what the market was missing and how we could do better.
Visual design
While building product concepts, we also built the brand: colour palette, typography, 3D modelling, illustration style, icons and brand values. I contributed to the design guideline and shaped the brand values.
Since we were designing for kids, we wanted something they’d love and parents could trust: light tones of blue and coral, soft playful illustrations, and an interface kept as simple as possible.
Ideation
The product
After multiple rounds of sketches and prototypes, and feedback from peers, parents and professors, we finalized a product design that addresses every core problem we set out to solve.
Our first design was a generic tube-shaped inhaler. Feedback pushed us to explore friendlier forms, something kids would actually love to carry around.
Once the physical product reached a good level of quality and function, we defined what the app needed. From our interviews with pharmacists and parents, we set four goals:
Simple
An easy, intuitive experience kids understand: playful, and familiar enough to feel comforting.
Safe and secure
Reassure parents about the safety of their children’s health.
Informative
Clear, simple communication at every step of the product. Remove vagueness and guide users to their goals.
Manageable
Asthma attacks can be disruptive, so we looked for every chance to help users use the product with ease and confidence.
Ideation
The app
With the physical product set, we prioritized the app’s core features, iterated many times and ran in-class tests to validate. This is where I contributed most, designing the UI and UX and finalizing every screen for the prototype.
User flows
We created four user flows to showcase the app’s features:
- User onboarding: connecting the physical device to the app.
- First-time use: after onboarding, helping users get familiar with the features.
- Returning user (normal): a parent checking on their child’s inhaler usage.
- Returning user (emergency): guiding a parent to practise with their child if they’re having trouble using the inhaler properly.
Final product
How does Oble work?
A visual walkthrough of how the product works.
Scroll sideways to see all 4 →
Personalizing your Oble
To make kids want to carry Oble everywhere, we added stickers on top of the swappable silicone animal sleeves.
Promotional video
We also made a short marketing video. Together we wrote the script, recorded the audio and planned the storyboard, while Zac created the animation and illustrations.
Introducing the Oble app
With the Oble app, parents can remotely monitor their child’s asthma and track their breathing efficiency with every use.
Always up to date
Real-time tracking keeps parents up to date with their child’s health.
Detailed reports
Export a detailed report as a document to share with their doctor.
Practise often
Practice mode helps parents make sure their child uses proper breathing technique.
No second-guessing
Set alerts for when the medication is running out and needs replacing.
An interactive onboarding
A simple, delightful first-run experience for pairing Oble with the app and creating the child’s profile.
A quick tour after setup
Pop-ups on each screen introduce users to the different features of the app.
Notified every time Oble is used
Compare weekly and monthly usage with detailed reports. Tracking usage helps parents understand the severity of their child’s asthma.
Practise to improve breathing
Oble measures the volume of air inhaled with every use to track breathing efficiency. If the child is having trouble, parents get an alert so they can practise together.
Reflection
Key takeaway
This was my first group project in college, and it taught me the importance of collaboration. We worked on every part of the project together, meeting twice a week to review progress and critique each other’s work. Each of us had strengths outside design, and playing to them let us push past the brief and learn new skills. The journey and the outcome were truly rewarding.
Personally, it taught me to think about a product beyond the app, across every consumer touchpoint and the product as a whole, and what goes into building meaningful products that could impact real users.
What would I do differently today?
Go deeper on research
Ask more questions of parents, doctors and children; add focus groups, surveys, interviews and A/B tests; understand how inhalers and spacers really work, do a more thorough market analysis, and explore whether combining them is feasible.
Test with real users
As a speculative project, we never user-tested the final design. I’d bring potential users into the process to get feedback early and often.
